NationStates Jolt Archive

ok we all know Marx's wrote it down, but who was the first person who live it and followed it. I always thought it was the Native of America, they did everything for the better of the tribe. However I resently asked the same question to a person who was more...... thinking then me. The answer he gave me was kind of surprising. He told me that christ was the first communist that the way he lived out his life was just how marx wrote that a communist should live his life and do. I dunno that sounds like propaganda. but hey the question's out there.

I personally doubt that there has ever been a true communist.

It's a common misconception that Native Americans did everything for the tribe, when in reality they actually did most stuff for themselves. Their economy was very primitive, but it was still a barter market economy.

Christ wasn't really a communist either, one can argue that he was a communalist, but the difference between a communalist and a communist are that communalists are typically a small group of people who work for the good of the community, and they typically have very little use for laziness.

ok we all know Marx's wrote it down, but who was the first person who live it and followed it. I always thought it was the Native of America, they did everything for the better of the tribe. However I resently asked the same question to a person who was more...... thinking then me. The answer he gave me was kind of surprising. He told me that christ was the first communist that the way he lived out his life was just how marx wrote that a communist should live his life and do. I dunno that sounds like propaganda. but hey the question's out there.
Christ and the Natives of America
Well actually Christ was more of a Socialist

But the very first, as far as I am concerned, were the Spartans, ancient of course, They Lived and shared every fricken thing
nothing was private
not even your "wife"
every thing was the same also

Early humans. They lived in communal societies.

all spartan clothes, food, and amount of money were the same
They shared two big "houses", more like hotels, that all men or all women would live in

Early humans. They lived in communal societies.

Communualist != Communist.

Early humans. They lived in communal societies.
But they were more like the natives of America
much was for community but more was for yourself

all spartan clothes, food, and amount of money were the same
They shared two big "houses", more like hotels, that all men or all women would live in

Who did?

Edit: ah, the Spartans, not all the early humans. I had taken 'spartan' as an adjective rather than a nationality, because it wasn't capitalised, but still did all the Spartans share just two houses? I find this a tad implausible.

Who did?
The ancient Spartans
Their military was also much like the Russian armies and Red armies of China

Who did?

Edit: ah, the Spartans, not all the early humans. I had taken 'spartan' as an adjective rather than a nationality, because it wasn't capitalised, but still did all the Spartans share just two houses? I find this a tad implausible.
what I meant was that the men and women were seperated, not too commie, nd had to eat the "grub" soup

Christ and the Natives of America
Well actually Christ was more of a Socialist

But the very first, as far as I am concerned, were the Spartans, ancient of course, They Lived and shared every fricken thing
nothing was private
not even your "wife"
every thing was the same also
On the other hand the Spartans also had a hierarchical society, which ranged from the King up at the top, to the dark secret people who use them as an example of communism NEVER bring up, slaves.

Yes, the Spartan economy was founded upon slaves captured with the use of their superior military. These slaves performed all basic labor for the Spartans, ranging from agricultural work to feed the Spartan armies to mining and such to allow the spartans to make their weapons, and the slave revolt eventually led to the downfall of Sparta and the domanance of Athens.

Communualist != Communist.

Eh, close enough.

Eh, close enough.
actually, no, it isn't.

On the other hand the Spartans also had a hierarchical society, which ranged from the King up at the top, to the dark secret people who use them as an example of communism NEVER bring up, slaves.

Yes, the Spartan economy was founded upon slaves captured with the use of their superior military. These slaves performed all basic labor for the Spartans, ranging from agricultural work to feed the Spartan armies to mining and such to allow the spartans to make their weapons, and the slave revolt eventually led to the downfall of Sparta and the domanance of Athens.
It was a much more lenin based government.
because of military

It was a much more lenin based government.
because of military

What? The issue of the Helots can't be dismissed by appeals to a thinker who wouldn't be born for another two and a half millenia or thereabouts. If anything I see the civilisation of Sparta as closer to fascism than to communism (if we ignore the fact that one is primarily a political framework and the other an economic one for the moment). The segregation not only between slaves and freemen, but also between the different ranks of citizen argues pretty strongly against anything that we would comprehend as equivalent to modern communism.

It was a much more lenin based government.
because of military
Kind of, I'd say it was more of an Orwellian system. With the three caste distinctions, the proles, the party members and the inner party members.

if you want to be anal, Marx was the first "Communist", but as mentioned, native americans and prehistoric humans did live in communist like societies, to the extent of our knowledge anyway

Kind of, I'd say it was more of an Orwellian system. With the three caste distinctions, the proles, the party members and the inner party members.

...but don't forget that this Orwellian analysis is in fact a description of the British (more accurately, English) class system during and after the second world war, rather than a direct look at a totalitarian state, whether it be a leftist or a rightist one.

if you want to be anal, Marx was the first "Communist", but as mentioned, native americans and prehistoric humans did live in communist like societies, to the extent of our knowledge anyway
Communal, which is very different from Communist.

...but don't forget that this Orwellian analysis is in fact a description of the British (more accurately, English) class system during and after the second world war, rather than a direct look at a totalitarian state, whether it be a leftist or a rightist one.
That is true, but I'm saying that it also represents the Spartan hierarchy fairly well.

What? The issue of the Helots can't be dismissed by appeals to a thinker who wouldn't be born for another two and a half millenia or thereabouts. If anything I see the civilisation of Sparta as closer to fascism than to communism (if we ignore the fact that one is primarily a political framework and the other an economic one for the moment). The segregation not only between slaves and freemen, but also between the different ranks of citizen argues pretty strongly against anything that we would comprehend as equivalent to modern communism.
Sorry about the Helot part I was excluding that but look at what happened to the great revolt of the Russians.
They lost communism did they not?

if you want to be anal, Marx was the first "Communist", but as mentioned, native americans and prehistoric humans did live in communist like societies, to the extent of our knowledge anyway

Well, if you want to be really anal, the first communists were the supporters of Cabet.


Anyhow, returning to Marx, he certainly did not envisage the life of the hunter gatherers as communist, instead he saw there the birth of division of labour, and thus class distinction. What you describe as 'communist like societies' were actually the start of the history of the world as class struggle.

Well, if you want to be really anal, the first communists were the supporters of Cabet.


Anyhow, returning to Marx, he certainly did not envisage the life of the hunter gatherers as communist, instead he saw there the birth of division of labour, and thus class distinction. What you describe as 'communist like societies' were actually the start of the history of the world as class struggle.
IF you believe in the Prehistoric Humans!

Sorry about the Helot part I was excluding that but look at what happened to the great revolt of the Russians.
They lost communism did they not?

They never had it, they didn't even get close, and I'm not just making some 'no true Scotsman' argument here, rather, if we follow on from Marx for the moment, we see that there was no industrial base upon which to build their revolution: they pretty much leapt out of a feudalist society into an attempt at communism. This kind of thing may work well on a smaller scale for a short period of time (witness the collectives in the SCW), but it doesn't come anywhere close to the worldwide economic revolution which is required within Marxist thought. Remember he expected that the UK or Germany would be the countries which would first make the leap towards a communist state, as here he thought he saw plainly the inherent contradictions of capitalism rising to the surface and destroying the whole class based system.

They never had it, they didn't even get close, and I'm not just making some 'no true Scotsman' argument here, rather, if we follow on from Marx for the moment, we see that there was no industrial base upon which to build their revolution: they pretty much leapt out of a feudalist society into an attempt at communism. This kind of thing may work well on a smaller scale for a short period of time (witness the collectives in the SCW), but it doesn't come anywhere close to the worldwide economic revolution which is required within Marxist thought. Remember he expected that the UK or Germany would be the countries which would first make the leap towards a communist state, as here he thought he saw plainly the inherent contradictions of capitalism rising to the surface and destroying the whole class based system.
Just forget that last post
I was not thinking straight

IF you believe in the Prehistoric Humans!

Well, as evidence for the way they are likely to have looked we have the reports of anthropologists examining similar cultures in the modern world and the correspondence between their way of life and the archeological evidence left by early man. Here we certainly see that there exists a fairly firmly entrenched division of labour, at its most basic along lines of sex, but also subdivisions between your generic hunter-gatherers and your tribal leaders.

Personally, I tend to lean more towards the analysis of Pierre Claestres which argues that these minor class divisions in h-g societies were not in fact steps which lead towards the more marked class divisions in agrarian and proto-city based societies, but rather defense mechanisms established so as to ward off competition from the newer sedentary societies and to fight the process of co-option into their static lifestyles. Deleuze and Guattari take this idea and run with it, but really its somewhat too late at night for me to start getting into them now...

On the other hand the Spartans also had a hierarchical society, which ranged from the King up at the top...

Two Kings. They always had two kings.

:)